Drunken Owls and Other Delights

I seem to have forgotten to do a few things this week! I posted this a day late, I'm posting a new music blog entry late, I'm a few days behind on Inktober (already?!??) and my revision work on Theadia is falling behind as well. What the hell, self?? Part of it is just being focused on important Day Job and IRL stuff, as well as the last several days being way too hot to do anything more than chill with the cats, so it's not as if I've just been lazy. I have today off, so I can easily catch up, so I'm not too bothered by it. 

In the meantime, I had Covid shot number...five?...yesterday afternoon, and other than maybe a bit of muscle soreness, I'm totally fine. I do need to get my flu shot as well, but I figure I'll do that at a later time rather than get hit with everything at once. I think I might need to do a checkup for my insurance open enrollment anyway, so I could easily do it then.

I've pointed this out so many times anyway: this is the time of year where everything happens at once. Q4 begins, various bills come due, flu season, changes in weather, and so on. Things fall by the wayside if I'm not paying attention. I just have to pick up where I left off, is all.

As always, the new month brings in newly refreshed plans. The whiteboard has been revived, and things have been started. Day 2 of Inktober has just been drawn. I even wrote a 750Words entry yesterday! I still need to properly balance it all, but I'll get it soon enough. Today's going to be a bit tricky as we're heading to the opera today and I'll probably only have an hour or so for working once we get back home, but I'm getting in what I can.

I'm still annoyed at that unknown idiot who tapped my car in the lot at my job yesterday and left a dent and a scrape but no note, but not overly angry. I've already set up a claim with my car insurance, and if needed I can get footage from work (I confirmed that our store saves footage for a good long time). It's not a huge ding, but enough that it needs fixing and touchup paint. And it's high enough that I'm sure that it's either a minivan or a truck, and someone who can't drive for shit. But the point here is that I'm not letting it ruin my day unnecessarily. It is what it is, the car is still drivable, and nothing's broken. And as I've said before: this is annoyance. You'd know if I was actually angry or pissed off.

Other than that, all is well here. Hope everyone has a good week!

So how has Busy October been so far? Well, I'm a little frustrated with myself right now because Procrastination is once again biting me in the ass, but other than that, not so bad. I've been making nearly all the deadlines I've given myself, even if I'm doing them at the last possible moment in the day. And that's never a good thing for me, because that's my high school-era bad habit that ends up with rushed and half-assed work.

The response to that is to not see it as failure, but Room for Improvement. I have to push the work back to earlier in the day (if it's possible -- Day Job tomfoolery comes first, obviously). Close those social media tabs and open the blogs that need updating.

Am I giving myself too much to do? I don't think so. I have a lot on my plate, yes, but I like having a lot on my plate...if I'm able to successfully juggle it all. This is why I'm okay with busy days at work, if I'm not interrupted by someone asking me to suddenly drop everything and work on something else instead. [That only serves to piss me off, because it completely messes with my internal planning of things. And really, is finding a check for you that much a matter of life or death?] So if everything is running smoothly, I can jump from one to the other relatively easily. I'm writing this while I'm waiting for my work PC to finish running a job. I took care of household chores on the weekend so I won't be interrupted by laundry runs or anything. The Big Project Work is saved for evenings: the Final Line Edit of The Persistence of Memories on the PC, and the galley edit of A Division of Souls for my night reading in bed.

I've also been writing up my daily progress in my desk calendar notebook as well. I'm hitting at least four or five things a day: the daily 750, the Inktober meme, the editing, the personal journal, and occasionally the blog post. I'm happy with that. So the improvement needed is not in the quality or quantity of the words...it's in the time management, as always.

Yay vacation! Currently enjoying my last week of days off before I jump back into the excitement of bank work for the rest of the year. We had no real travel plans this time out and decided to take a quick flight (just under 2 hours) to sunny rainy Portland OR for a few days. We had no real plans other than to drive around, see the sights, and spend way too much money at Powell's City of Books. Much fun was had, many pictures were taken, and we saw quite a lot of fun things. I've come to the conclusion that Portland very much has the same "college town" feel as Boston, maybe with a bit of a Pioneer Valley feel for flavor. We also drove up Route 84 to the start of the Columbia Gorge, which is absolutely lovely (and would have been more so if it hadn't been raining).

So what are we doing for the rest of our vacation? Not much of anything, really. Go see a movie, do a bit of walking, dread heading back to work on Monday. The usual. :)

I'm a few days behind on Inktober due to being busy during vacation, as well as being superlazy yesterday, so that means I'll have to play catch-up for the rest of the week. The fascinating part of taking part in this meme is that it's definitely reawakened my love for drawing. I've always wanted to devote more time to it but never got around to it, and the meme reminded me that I can still pull it off. In a way it's the same as my music playing--I never played all that much until I bought a few more, and now I'm noodling around on my guitars a bit every day. [Same with working on my daily 750 Words--that's been a great writing exercise for me.] I've even done a bit of shopping for art pens and found a great pack that I think I'll love using (which I bought at Powell's, no less)! I'm curious to see where this goes. Will I ever go pro with it? Probably not...but I think I'm back at the level I was at in college, and I'm really liking that feeling, and that's what matters.

In other and more pressing news, this morning I got an email from Angry Robot. They've turned down A Division of Souls, but I'm okay with that. In fact, I have to appreciate their not only giving me an update email during their business shuffling, but in this one stating one of the reasons why they turned it down. [More on that in a Welcome to Bridgetown post later.] I'm understandably bummed, but at the same time I'm relieved and excited. Someone not only read it but took the time to say something about it upon return, and that's given me food for thought. Does this mean more revision? Possibly. Does it mean weighing self-pub versus professional publishing again? Perhaps. I don't think I'll be spending nearly as much time on the trilogy as I have in the past--most of the possible revision would be cosmetic at this point--and besides, I have two (possibly three) other projects that I'm juggling at the moment that I really should not put off any longer. It'll be interesting and busy for a while longer, but I can handle it, as long as I keep myself focused.

I've a feeling 2015 is going to be quite intense for me, but in a good way.

For those of you who follow me over on my Tumblr site, you may have noticed I've decided to take part in Inktober, which I would describe as an artist's version of NaNoWriMo--draw something every day of the month and post it somewhere using the #inktober hashtag. The only rule being the end result has to be in ink (and again that leaves it wide open--I've used both my art pens and a ballpoint Bic from my back pocket). It's been fun so far, because I get to doodle something every day! I'm not going out of my way to make a masterpiece...just a caricature or a Murph drawing or something that usually takes no more than a half-hour tops to make, and post it using my phone.

This is on top of my ongoing attempt to ramp up the output. Per my last post, I did pretty good with hitting goal at 750Words.com 29 out of the 30 days. Some of those entries were just personal ramblings, but many of them ended up being exercises in figuring out who the characters in my latest project are. I'd have conversations with myself, asking 'what does [character] look like?' or 'what's their ultimate goal in the story?' and so on, and it really helped me figure out where it's going. The other goal of using 750Words is that it forces me to sit down and think about writing-related things for a bit--it's breaking the wall of procrastination that bites me in the ass so often. And ultimately, it's gotten me back to the 2001-2003 levels of dedication to my writing, which is what I've been aiming for. Those were the Trilogy years where I was down in the Belfry without fail, every single day, working on something...and this is exactly what I've been aiming for, and I'm quite happy about that.

Oh! And also, we have a new modem/router! Yay! Our 2Wire has been in the apartment for a few good years, and it was starting to crap out more than usual. It would drop at the most inopportune times, especially while we were working. I'll admit we were taxing it during the day, what with her terminal, my work router, and me streaming a radio station. This new one's a Pace and it's working a treat. Quite happy with it so far.

So. Today's goal, outside of writing? Ice cream! I heard tell that there's a nifty ice cream shop down in the Sunset on Noriega that we should check out. Has numerous flavors and they're made locally, and it's quite a find. We may just jump on the 29 today and check it out. :)